Monday, July 30, 2012

Phoenix Rising by Theo Fenraven

Blurb:

New
York City homicide detectives Artemis Gregory and Rachel Wayland are
first on the murder scene of a beautiful young gay man, the third victim
of a serial killer dubbed the Moon Killer by the department. Their
investigation leads them to Talis Kehk, charismatic lead singer of the
rock group Phoenix Rising. As the next full moon approaches, Artemis and
his partner uncover clues that lead straight to Talis—even as Talis,
exhibiting behavior Artemis finds strange indeed considering the
circumstances, uses every means possible to keep Artemis close.

Artemis
could never fall in love with a murderer, could he? Innocent or not,
Talis has a secret… and it’s about to change Artemis’s world forever.

I am your brightest, most beautiful dream, and your darkest, most secret desire.

I am the burning golden heat of the sun, and the quiet, silver-blue shadows of the moon.

I am man. I am woman.

I am nothing.

I am all.

Chapter One Artemis

There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy. —Ambrose Bierce

THE
phone on the nightstand woke Homicide Detective Artemis Gregory just
past 4:00 a.m. Stubbornly keeping his eyes closed despite there being no
chance in hell he’d be able to go back to sleep, he grabbed it without
fumbling from long practice. “Gregory.”

“We’ve got another one,” his partner, Rachel Wayland, said in her sexy “I don’t smoke but I sound like I do” voice.

Gregory
immediately got a picture of her in his mind: tall, slender, long
auburn hair always clipped back, warm brown eyes, mobile mouth. She was
pretty enough to model but dismissed her good looks, preferring to work
in law enforcement. She’d told him more than once how much she enjoyed
partnering with him. “I like that you’re gay, Gregory. I like knowing you will never be the slightest bit tempted to hit on me.”

“Is it our moon
killer?” This would be the third. First night of each month’s full moon,
a young, attractive man was killed. They were hunting another loony
tune who possibly saw himself as a werewolf, though this one, at least,
didn’t bite off chunks of his victim’s flesh. In fact, they didn’t know
how he killed them, only that he fucked them and then they croaked.
There had been 536 homicides in NYC the year before; similarities were
carefully tracked in all cases, and these deaths stood out because there
was no obvious cause for them.

“Initial reports point that way.” She rattled off the address. “Bring coffee, and maybe croissants?”

Grinning,
he hung up, stretched, rose, and dressed. Expecting the call, he’d
showered before bed, just in case. So far they had lots of DNA, but no
matches. The killer’s prints were not listed in IAFIS (Integrated
Automated Fingerprint ID System), nor had they gotten a hit at CODIS
(Combined DNA Index System). After this killing, a task force would be
assembled, and someone at ViCAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program)
would probably get involved. He hoped the FBI didn’t send a complete
weenie.

He looked at himself in
the mirror as he brushed his teeth. No gray hairs yet in his short
black hair, even though being a cop was famous for causing early aging.
His brown eyes were still clear, and there were no lines around them or
his wide mouth. His tall, tightly muscled body was holding up, too,
despite his not having time to visit the gym; mostly he did free weights
at home and sit-ups to keep his stomach flat. Not bad for 33. I could get me some, if I had the time. He rinsed and spit, dragged a comb through his hair, and left.

The streets were full
of garbage trucks and drunks. In a couple hours, buses and cars would
start to move. Humidity was already making the hot summer air worse. He
loved this city. He also hated it, having grown up in Michigan. The
Upper Peninsula was quite possibly the most beautiful place in the
world, if you loved trees and water and more trees. It was a
backpacker’s wet dream. But you also had to love winter, because it
started early and stayed late. After high school, his family decided
they didn’t love it that much anymore and moved to New York, where
Artemis eventually attended college before moving on to the police
academy. He considered himself a New Yorker now, another denizen of the
over-crowded city, but recently he’d been dreaming of trees and water
and more trees.

He stopped at a Starbucks on the way to the crime scene. If he forgot Rachel’s coffee, she’d kill him.

Lots of people were milling around the brownstone when he arrived. Someone recognized him and said, “Second floor back.”

Nodding, Artemis
galloped up the stoop and through the open door, careful not to spill or
drop anything. “Second floor back” was teeming with CSU and other
interested parties, but only the ME and CSU were in the bedroom with the
body. NYPD threw lots of people at a major crime. Sometimes this worked
well. At other times, it merely muddied the waters.

Rachel nodded at him,
took her coffee and croissant, and handed him a pair of latex gloves. He
slipped them on, gazing at the victim. “Not in here,” he cautioned her.

She rolled her eyes at him. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“Uh-uh.”
No food or liquid at a crime scene. It could contaminate evidence, and
the smell alone might mask other odors. “Who called this in?”

“One of his roommates. You saw him in the other room.”

Artemis remembered. A nice-looking young man with eyes red from crying and wet pants; he’d pissed himself upon finding the body.

Rachel continued. “Came home to quite a surprise. Third roommate is away, visiting his sister in Jersey.”

The victim was young, beautiful, and naked, his limbs spread-eagled on the bed. “He looksarranged,
don’t you think?” He eyed the body with interest. The skin was
uniformly pale, untouched by the sun. The expression on the dead man’s
face was calm, peaceful. His lower legs were covered with scratches,
deep enough to bleed. Cameras flashed as CSU took pictures. “Cause of
death?”

John Nolan, the medical
examiner, swabbed an intimate part of the victim’s body. “Have to wait
for the autopsy, but I suspect it will be the same as the other two. ‘No
apparent cause of death\'.” He frowned. “It’s just not right.”

“Has the victim been
ID\'d?” Artemis asked. His roommates, family, friends, neighbors, and
coworkers would be questioned politely but extensively by the NYPD over
the next few days.

“Donny Carlson,” one of
the CSU offered. “Found his wallet in the nightstand. He was twenty
years old. He had a driver’s license issued in Illinois. Letters from
home found near the door indicate he only recently arrived in our fair
city. Roommate confirms Carlson moved in a couple months ago.”

Donny probably had
parents, maybe siblings. He’d certainly had dreams, and had come here to
fulfill them. Artemis waited for Nolan to finish collecting his
samples, including scraping under the nails, before doing a quick
examination of his own.

On Carlson’s back,
Artemis found a small gold-inked tattoo of a bird with outstretched
wings. It was beautiful and exquisitely detailed. He’d seen it before on
the first victim, only that one had been on a left hip. They’d
canvassed some of the shops, asking about it, and tracked it to a place
in Times Square named Demon Tattoos. The owner had told them the design
was exclusive to that shop and was proving popular with fans of the rock
band Phoenix Rising. He’d provided a list of clients who had asked for
it, but nothing further had been done with it.

“Nolan? Preliminary findings?”

“Mr. Carlson engaged in anal sex shortly before death. No condom. I got a sample of the semen.”

“Consensual?”

“As far as I can tell. Minor anal tears, as you might expect, no blood, lots of lubricant.”

Artemis frowned. “Barebacking, just like the first two victims.”

He grabbed his bag. “We done here?”

“For now. Send me the report as soon as it’s completed.”

It was difficult to
take his eyes off Donny Carlson. Under other circumstances, Artemis
might have ended up with him after meeting him at some bar. Instead,
Carlson had gone home with someone inappropriate and been killed.
Artemis took pictures with his cell, most of them of the bird tattoo.

Donny was bagged,
loaded onto a stretcher, and taken from the room. The CSU swarmed,
gathering evidence now revealed by the body’s removal. One of them
handed an evidence bag to Artemis. “Take a look at that.”

Inside the bag was a
feather about three inches long, gently curved tip to end, the barbs an
iridescent gold that flashed red as he turned it under the ceiling
light. Below the barbs and above the calamus?the hollow shaft that was
inserted into skin?were downy after-feathers. “Did Donny or a roommate
have a bird?” he asked the room. Various negative responses came back.
He held the bag up. “Anyone know what bird this belongs to?”

Everyone glanced his
way, then shrugged and went back to work. Artemis handed the bag back to
the CSU; it would go to the lab for study when they returned to
headquarters.